RACHMANINOFF’S RHAPSODY
Australian Chamber Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Saturday February 7 ay 7:30 pm
No, it’s not the composer’s Russian Rhapsody of 1891 for two pianos but – as you’ve anticipated – the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, written in 1934 and these days the most popular of his works for piano with orchestra. To foreground the Australian Chamber Orchestra‘s excursion into this spiky score, Dejan Lazic comes back to work with Richard Tognetti and his gifted players. In keeping with recent ACO practice, the orchestra will be reduced, in this case confined to strings and percussion. It’s improbable that any arrangement will make up for the missing 20 wind players; we’ll all just have to adjust our levels of disbelief. Stravinsky, who was remarkably non-catty about his fellow-exile, also appears on the program with his Concerto in D for strings of 1946 from just about when the composer had become a freshly-minted American citizen. Proceedings open with an ACO commission – Horizon – from the committed environmentalist American John Luther Adams. As a counterweight to all this Americana, home-grown and imported, we hear Lithuanian composer Raminta Serksnyte‘s early work for strings from 1998, De Profundis. It’s a searing, aggressive (for the most part) score of great passion and rigour; just the sort of music that attracts this group which is here playing its Australian premiere. Ticket prices range between $30 for a student to $175 for an adult top seat; you have to add on the excessive ‘handling fee’ of between $7 and $8.50, depending on what your delivery mode is.
This program will be repeated on Sunday February 8 in Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne at 2:30 pm and again on Monday February 8 in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre at 7:30 pm.
SYMPHONIC CELEBRATION
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sidney Myer Music Bowl
Tuesday February 10 at 7:30 pm
Some traditions hold fast and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s free concerts at the Myer Bowl still flourish, I see, even if the format has altered since I last sweltered into the venue along with half of Melbourne. Tonight’s conductor will be Leonard Weiss, the organization’s Cybec assistant conductor (although he doesn’t appear as such on the MSO website); he has an impressive list of accomplishments and engagements here, in New Zealand, and across Europe. His main task tonight will be infusing novelty into Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 – still in C minor, as one curmudgeonly British critic once wrote. Eventually completed in 1808, it remains one of the composer’s most striking and accessible compositions and concludes with the mother of all C Major codas. The program’s soloist is the MSO’s principal trumpet, Owen Morris, who premiered Sydney composer Holly Harrison‘s Hellbent back in April 2021: ten minutes of jazz-style inflections for the soloist and written by someone who can actually play the instrument. Pleasing us all with its familiarity comes Grieg’s publication of 1888, the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1: Morning Mood, The Death of Ase, Anitra’s Dance, and In the Hall of the Mountain King. This appeared in one of the MSO’s first programs (way back with Zelman’s Albert Street Conservatorium Orchestra?) and satisfies for its emotional canvas and satisfyingly balanced phrase lengths. To begin, the voice of a Cybec (how that organization gets around) Young Composer in Residence is heard in a specially commissioned Fanfare. This is Andrew Aranowicz who has proficiency in this field, having contributed to the fifty fanfares written on commission for the Sydney Symphony in 2022, his brass decet Pride a jaunty, well-crafted sample of the form. We can only anticipate similar.
AUSTRALIAN YOUTH ORCHESTRA
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sidney Myer Music Bowl
Wednesday February 11 at 7:30 pm
Rather than putting themselves out, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is giving up one of its Bowl nights to the Australian Youth Orchestra. I haven’t heard this group for many years, long enough for the personnel – both players and administrators – to have changed completely. Anyway, tonight they begin with American writer Anna Clyne‘s This Midnight Hour of 2015: a 12-minute complex that the Australian National Academy of Music performers aired last March at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Next comes Daniel Nelson‘s Steampunk Blizzard, a 2016 fanfare by the American-born Swedish resident whose composition lasts a little over 7 minutes and sets some nifty rhythmic puzzles for young players, mainly to do with dotted quavers. It’s racy and highly atmospheric, especially if you’re into the industry-heavy side of steampunkery, while its progress shows influences of Bernstein and, at one luminous passage, Janacek’s Sinfonietta finale. Then comes Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite from 1945, rearranged so the always-thrifty composer wouldn’t miss out on his American copyright cash. There are three pantomime interludes between the first four dances but, even with this expansion, the score lasts barely half an hour. So, from what I can see, this all adds up to less than an hour’s music, a quick concert – unless there’s going to be a lot of talk. The evening’s conductor is Christian Reif from Germany, currently chief conductor of Sweden’s Gavle Orchestra, his predecessor in that post being Jaime Martin . . . which just goes to show that what goes around, goes around. As usual, this is a free event.
BAROQUE MASTERS
Australian Brandenburg Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Thursday February 12 at 7 pm
Opening its Melbourne operations for this year, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra gets back to basics with a fully Baroque program: Handel, Bach, Vivaldi and Pachelbel. As well, the concert’s soloists come from the Brandenburg ranks – all local talent. Nevertheless, much of the content relies on the ensemble’s strings with artistic director Paul Dyer regulating everybody’s input from his centrally-positioned harpsichord. To begin, a Handel concerto grosso from the seminal Op. 6 published in 1739: the first one, in G. Then come the middle two of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos – No. 3 in G for strings and No. 4 also in G which asks for a front group of solo violin and two recorders. As we all know, these were presented to the idiot Margrave in 1721 and five of them disappeared from public notice. I don’t know what’s happening in this version of No. 4: Melissa Farrow is down to play baroque flute, but Adam Masters is listed as performing baroque oboe. Concertmaster Shaun Lee-Chen will probably take on the solo string line which has just as much work to do, if not more, than the two wind players. Then we’ll have a break from G Major and hear the one Pachelbel piece that everyone knows: his Canon in D for strings which you can encounter at many a wedding or funeral in this country. To end, Vivaldi’s 1705 Trio Sonata Op. 1 No. 12 which is a set of 20 variations in D minor on that useful progression, La Folia. It also involves two violins and a continuo part but I sense that its original modesty in personnel demands might take a turn for overkill. The ticketing is an administrative saga. Full adult prices move from $45 to $167; concession card holders inexplicably fall between $54 and $105. If you’re a senior, your range is $77 to $151; a full-time student sits anywhere for $20; an Under 40 only gets into A Reserve at $36. I won’t carry on about the individual price for groups of 10+ but will excite you with the news that prices vary between this and later performances. A constant is the $4-$8.50 fee exercised by the Recital Centre if you book online or by phone; the grifters we have always with us.
This program will be repeated on Saturday February 14 at 5 pm and on Sunday February 15 at 5 pm.
50 YEARS OF ABC CLASSIC
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Sidney Myer Music Bowl
Saturday February 14 at 7:30 pm
In a burst of patriotic fervour, this program from the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra celebrating a pivotal national radio station (and the rest) comprises Australian music only; as far as I can tell, all the soloists are well-known locals. Let’s see what sort of crowd this program attracts, although it strikes me that you could play a night of Berwald alongside Hovhaness and the place would be packed. No, it’s not just because it’s free, but that helps. Benjamin Northey conducts works by ten writers covering a wide range. He opens with Nigel Westlake‘s Cudmirrah Fanfare of 1987: a two-minute jubilation. Then we hear selections from Westlake’s Antarctica Suite, extracted in 1991 from music written for a documentary and tonight featuring guitarist Slava Grigoryan; obviously, we won’t get all four movements. An up-to-the-moment effort comes from Ella Macens with the world premiere of her My Heart on Yours about which nothing is known – yet. A nod to the recent elders with Sculthorpe’s nostalgic Small Town for chamber orchestra of 1963, inspired by D.H Lawrence’s antipodean saga, Kangaroo. A vital contrast comes with the last movement of Ross Edwards‘ Maninyas Violin Concerto, written in 1988 – a voice that can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s and tonight featuring as soloist the MSO’s concertmaster Natalie Chee. We wouldn’t be complete without an Elena Kats-Chernin contribution, and here it’s her 2021 Momentum involving lots of woodwind throughout its seven minutes. As we’ve arrived at the statutory female part of the night, we’ll hear from the mainly expatriate writer Peggy-Glanville Hicks through the Promenade first movement from her Etruscan Concerto of 1954 which also calls for chamber orchestra only and will feature pianist Aura Go. A better-known blast from the past arrives in Miriam Hyde and her Andante tranquillo reworked from the Piano Concerto No. 2 of 1935 and which you’d have to assume will also be delivered with Go as soloist. James Henry, the MSO’s Cybec First Nations Composer in Residence, is contributing his Warrin (Wombat Season for the Wurundjeri, lasting from April to July), written in 2022 for string orchestra. To finish, here come the co-composing Tawadros brothers, Joseph and James on oud and req respectively, with a trio of numbers, all from their 2014 album Permission to Evaporate: first Constantinople, then Bluegrass Nikriz, and the title track to finish. It’s exciting music to experience in person and makes an affirmatively multi-cultural end to this night which has almost exclusively spoken a single if unequivocally imported tongue. Entry is free, of course, and the Bowl gates open, as usual, at 5 pm.
BRAHMS WITH JACK AND KRISTIAN
Kristian Chong & Friends
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Tuesday February 17 at 7 pm
You can’t ask for a recital more direct in its material than this one. Pianist Kristian Chong is collaborating with violinist Jack Liebeck, the British-German musician who is currently artistic director of Townsville’s Australian Festival of Chamber Music. These artists are working through all three of the Brahms violin sonatas: the meltingly fine G Major of 1879, the direct-speaking A Major from 7 years later, and the D minor, strikingly sombre and aggressive, finished after a long gestation in 1888. Thanks to an old friend, violinist Andrew Lee, I gained early knowledge and affection for all these scores and can’t think of a finer way to spend listening time than with this music. Liebeck has already given ample evidence of his abilities in these sonatas, having recorded them to some acclaim with pianist Katya Apekisheva for Sony in 2010. As for Chong, he’s an unfailing expert in chamber music operations, being one of the few pianists I can think of who’s aware of his function and responsibilities throughout intimate, confessional works like these. Tickets are $20 for students, $45 for concession holders, $55 full adults. Never forgetting the sliding scale fee from $4 to $8.50 if you book online or by phone; the trouble is, you have to or you could miss out because of the small holding power of the Centre’s Salon.
STARBURST
Omega Ensemble
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Wednesday February 18 at 7 pm
Beginning its Melbourne operations for 2026, the Omega Ensemble travels down the Hume (or its aeronautical of XPT equivalents) to perform a demanding program bookended by contemporary compositions. The evening begins with American violinist-composer Jessie Montgomery‘s 2012 work for string orchestra (at least, you have to assume this is the format we’ll hear) that gives a title to this event. It’s quick: listen hard or it will pass you by. Then David Rowden, the Omegas’ artistic director and founder, plays solo in Finzi’s Clarinet Concerto of 1949 about which British critics have made extravagant claims regarding value and cultural merit. We’ll see. To follow, the Omega resident pianist Vatche Jambazian and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s principal trumpet David Elton go for the Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 1, with the composer at his enthusiastic best in that happy year of 1933, just before the Soviet apparatchik-generated dung hit the Stalin-generated fan over Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. To conclude, an Australian work enjoys its premiere: Lachlan Skipworth‘s A Turning Sky brings everyone together in a 2025 score for clarinet, trumpet, piano and strings. According to the quality of your chosen seating position, Under 30s prices range from $39 to $114; the rest of us pay between $64 to $139, concession card holders getting their tickets for $10 less. You can circumvent the Recital Centre’s $4 to $8.50 surcharge by not booking online or by phone; just turn up on the night.
GOLDBERG VARIATIONS BY J. S. BACH PERFORMED BY ERIN HELYARD
Pinchgut Opera
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Thursday February 19 at 7:30 pm
Here’s a commendable move by Sydney’s trailblazing opera company: sponsoring a performance of Bach’s brilliantly focused masterwork for keyboard, to be performed by Erin Helyard, our home-grown William Christie. It helps, I suppose, that he is Pinchgut’s artistic director and co-founder, but he became a familiar face here through his role as artist in residence at the Recital Centre in 2022 and his assumption of the same role with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra through 2024. Hence, I assume, the gamble of having him expound the Goldberg Variations in the Murdoch Hall rather than in the more rewardingly intimate (for him and for us) Primrose Potter Salon. Reassuringly, the performance is scheduled to last for about 70 minutes – which means that he’ll be observing all the repeats, or so you’d have to guess. Still, it’s a solid, fulfilling progress to the performer’s climactic repetition of the fulcrum theme and Bach’s organizational skill is still dazzling today, getting on for three centuries since the work’s initial publication in 1741. It’s fortunate if you’re under 35 as you can get a poor-to-not-bad seat for $35. If you’re older, you have to shell out between $55 and $140, with concession holders paying between $3 and $6 less – a demonstration of appalling niggardliness, especially when you have to accommodate the Transaction Fee imposed by the Recital Centre of between $4 and $8.50 if you book online or by phone.
GHOSTS MAKING FORM
ELISION
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre
Friday February 20 at 7 pm
This presentation from the contemporary music ensemble ELISION falls into three sections, the first pair being a ‘normal’ division of the entertainment into two halves. Then there’s an extra bit into which you can opt: a postlude billed as a Special Post-Concert Show. As far as I can tell, the whole recital is special: most of the composers are names I’ve never come across, although I can’t say that about the first one. Liza Lim has been a significant presence on this country’s modern music scene for many years and she begins this evening with her 2024 construct for cello (Freya Schack-Arnott) and piano (Alex Waite), written for a pair of Norwegian musicians which gives this program its title; then comes her brief Ming Qi, composed in 2000 for oboe (Niamh Dell) and percussion (Aditya Bhat or Peter Neville). Speaking of Scandinavia, a piece by Iceland-born writer Einar Torfi Einarsson follows: his Zone of proximity: (and the weakly interacting particles) from 2024 uses the forces of recorder (Ryan Williams) and cello (Schack-Arnott), here enjoying its premiere hearing. Victor Arul is currently Ph. D.-ing at Harvard after time in Perth and here; he is presenting new work from 2023 for the quartet of oboe (Dell), clarinet (Carl Rosman), trumpet (Tristram Williams) and piano (Waite). But he leaves us in a quandary: is this new work a ‘new work’ despite its dating from three years ago? Or is it actually called new work? Anyway, the first half of this exercise ends with Serbian-born Milica Djordjevic‘s 2022 Transfixed for bass clarinet (Rosman), trumpet (Williams), percussion (Bhat or Neville, or both), piano (Waite) and double bass (Rohan Dasika). We come back after a break for American musician Aaron Cassidy‘s 2021 E flat clarinet solo (Rosman, who commissioned it) 27. Juni 2009, taking a Gerhard Richter overpainted photograph as its stimulus. German composer Hakan Ulus is represented by a ‘new work’ but it dates from 2025 so he may not yet have decided on a title; in any case, it’s scored for cello (Schack-Arnott), piano (Waite) and percussion (Bhat/Neville). Amor, a vehement duet for flute (Paula Rae) and oboe (Dell), was written by John Rodgers in 1999, well before disastrous ill-health struck; a Queensland-born musician of high versatility, he died near Christmas 2024. To end this half, Cat Hope is represented by Goddess from last year, written for harp (Marshall McGuire), tam-tam (either Bhat or Neville, probably not both), and double bass (Dasika). The extra bit at the end of the concert proper features music by Lim, Mary Bellamy and Julio Estrada; these pieces will probably last about half-an-hour. Full-time students and concession card holders are charged $45, everybody else $55. And you also have to cope with the Recital Centre’s sliding transaction fee of anywhere between $4 and $8.50: an inimitable silliness that should preclude anybody from ordering online or by phone.
CHINESE NEW YEAR
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Hamer Hall, Arts Centre Melbourne
Saturday February 21 at 7:30 pm
These concerts have become a regular part of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra‘s annual presentations and this observation of the Year of the Horse promises a heady mixture of East and West with five works thrown together without concern for relevance or juxtapositioning. Conductor Li Biao is also an expert percussionist which may give him extra insight to cope with Beethoven’s three-quarters-bouncy A Major Symphony No. 7 of 1812. He also leads the orchestral support for Saint-Saens’ flamboyant Cello Concerto No. 1 of 1872, with American 2019 Tchaikovsky Competition winner Zlatomir Fung as soloist. As for the Chinese content, we’re hearing the last of Wang Xilin‘s Yunnan Tone Poems of 1963, the Torch Festival. Then Mindy Meng Wang takes centre stage with her guzheng for the 1959 Butterfly Lover’s Concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao; it was originally conceived as a violin concerto and I don’t know how it will sound on a zither. Anyway, the night ends with a piece by Julian Yu: an orchestral setting of Jasmine, that haunting Chinese folk song used by Puccini in Tudandot to moving effect on its first appearance in Act 1 when the boys start singing La, sui monti dell’Est. Tickets range from $75 to $127, with concession prices $5 cheaper; hooray. You have to stump up a $7 transaction fee if you order your ticket/s; pretty unavoidable as this event is very popular. God rot all money-grubbers.
MARKIYAN MELNYCHENKO AND RHODRI CLARKE
The Weiland Project
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Cntre
Sunday February 22 at 5 pm
The second violin/piano recital inside a week and with a similar bent. Where Jack Liebeck and Kristian Chong are playing all the Brahms violin sonatas on February 17, this evening/gloaming violinist Markiyan Melnychenko and pianist Rhodri Clarke are presenting four sonatas by Douglas Weiland, the British composer who was a foundation member of the Australian String Quartet and who was fortunate enough to find in one of his colleagues there, William Hennessy, an indefatigable promoter of his music. The Violin Sonatas 1, 2 and 3 are concentrated in a particular few years of Weiland’s creative life. The first, Op. 26, was first performed in January 2000, the second, Op. 28, (which is originally listed for violin and harpsichord) in July 2000, and the third, Op. 29, in December 2001. Added to these scores, which come in at a bit over 45 minutes in performance, Weiland, who will be present, has recently written a work for Melnychenko based on Ukrainian themes in support of that nation’s struggles with a Stalinist revenant. Ticket prices are $75 full adult, $65 concession with the usual $4-$8.50 transaction fee added if you buy online or by phone. But then, it’s risky fronting up to the box office on the night because the Salon capacity is small and you tempt non-admission.
BARTON & BRODSKY
Melbourne Recital Centre
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Wednesday February 25 at 7:30 pm
With didgeridoo master William Barton as their guest, the Brodsky Quartet members – violins Krysia Ostostowicz and Ian Belton, viola Paul Cassidy, cello Jacqueline Thomas – are treading a fine line between their traditional fare and the most ancient music I know still to be heard. I’m assuming that Barton won’t take part in certain segments of this program: Purcell’s Fantasia on One Note in Three Parts of about 1680 (or is it his Fantasia in Three Parts upon a Ground ca. 1678?) and Fantasia in D minor also from about 1680, Janacek’s Intimate Letters String Quartet No. 2 of 1928, and Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet (finished in 1914 but not published for eight years) although the advertising material suggests that Barton will be participating in this last. You can be fairly sure that he’ll be there for Peter Sculthorpe’s 1990 String Quartet No. 11, Jabiru Dreaming, which has an optional part for his instrument. He’ll also participate in Brisbane composer Robert Davidson‘s Minjerribah (2012?) depicting North Stradbroke Island and performed by Barton and the Brodskys in Auckland during March 2024. I doubt if there’s a role for him in Salina Fisher‘s 2017 Torino for string quartet alone and imitating sounds generated by the versatile Maori putorino instrument. Andrew Ford‘s Eden Ablaze String Quartet No. 7 of 2020 refers to the NSW township menaced by the 2019 bushfires and it was written for Barton and the Brodsky group. I can’t see much room for the digeridoo in the Irish tune She moved through the fair and hope that there’s none to distract from that superb lyric. But Barton himself wrote the final piece on this program: Square Circles Beneath the Red Desert Sand of 2020 which was partly commissioned by the Australian String Quartet. If you’re under 40, you can get a poor or middling seat for $49; full adult prices range from $79 to $139, concession holders paying $79 or $99 for a B Reserve or A Reserve. Everybody has to cope with the online/phone booking fee of between $4 and $8.50, depending on how much you’re prepared to pay for your place. Can’t advise on this one: don’t know how popular Barton and/or the Brodsky Quartet are.
FLEXIBLE SKY
Melbourne Chamber Orchestra
Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre
Thursday February 26 at 7:30 pm
Something of an odd collection here. The Melbourne Chamber Orchestra plays under the customary direction of Sophie Rowell and its guest soloist will be guitarist Slava Grigoryan; all well and good so far. Proceedings begin with a new work by Joe Chindamo; well, there are plenty of those flying around (see ELISION above) and this is a welcome MCO commission. It could involve Grigoryan, or it might confine itself to the core string ensemble. The next does require him: Vivaldi’s Guitar (Lute) Concerto in D of 1731 with its moving central Largo of a mere 17 bars. Then comes a true deviation from the norm in a transcription of Beethoven’s Moonlight Piano Sonata No. 14, published by Polish arranger Jakub Kowalewski in 2014 and transposing all three movements up a semitone; the third movement has a laugh a minute. Reason is restored with Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances in an orchestrated version, though probably not the composer’s own of 1917 which involves pairs of woodwind and horns. At last, we reach the title work, more or less. It was composed by Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel, the original recorded in 2017 by Grigoryan and the Australian String Quartet. This is a Redux version which was, like the Chindamo, commissioned by the MCO and so the original quartet will be swollen somewhat. Finally, as we opened with an Australian work, so we close – with Matthew Hindson‘s Song and Dance, composed in 2006 and giving you exactly what it says – a song (largo) and a dance (allegro), in this instance for string orchestra. I don’t know why but the seating prices for this event are extraordinarily complicated. Full adult prices range from $75 to $150; concession and senior entry is somewhat less – from $55 to $135; full-time students and children pay a flat $30; Under 40s can get a poor or middling spot for $40; and groups of 10+ will front up anything between $60 and $120 each. Also, you know that the Recital Centre has its claws out for your $4-to-$8,50 transaction fee if you book online or by phone.
This program will be repeated on Sunday March 1 at 2:30 pm.
O'Connell the Music 